Your data, explained plainly.

Information we collect

• Account information: your email address, account identifier, and sign-in information needed to provide your account.
• Cellar and app content: bottles, quantities, purchase details, notes, rankings, watchlists, preferences, feedback, sightings, store scores, comments, and submissions you choose to create.
• Community information: the display name, bio, profile photo, follow and block choices, group memberships, posts, comments, reactions, bottle ratings, reports, and related Activity/read-state information you choose to create or manage.
• Photos and camera data: photos you choose to capture or select for bottle identification, submissions, or your profile. We use them only for the feature you initiate.
• Location: precise location only when you allow it for nearby store discovery and location-based alerts. Nearby Sighting Alerts require a separate in-app opt-in. For that feature, Stave stores only an approximate location and timestamp, clears it when you turn the feature off, and removes stale location data after 14 days.
• Home ZIP and monthly app use: When the home ZIP audience feature is available in a compatible app release, setup asks U.S. collectors with a supported five-digit home ZIP to provide it. If you live outside the U.S. or your home ZIP is unsupported, you can explicitly continue without one; Stave records only that choice, not the reason. If the setup service is unavailable, you can use the app temporarily and finish setup later. A ZIP you save stays with your account until you change or remove it. When monthly audience measurement is enabled and you deliberately open or foreground Stave while signed in, we record one account-level activity observation for that UTC calendar month, with the first known home ZIP for that month. Background refresh and notification delivery do not count. For that measurement, we use a Census ZIP Code Tabulation Area internal point as an approximate ZIP center, not your device's travel history, to estimate whether an active account is within 75 straight-line miles of a store. These areas do not match every USPS ZIP and cannot verify an address. Unknown and unsupported ZIPs are excluded from the audience count.
• Notifications and watches: a device notification token, device/app information needed to deliver alerts, your alert and lock-screen-detail preferences, and the distillery approval watches or store/community alerts you choose to enable. Stale device tokens are removed after a limited inactivity period.
• Optional purchase details: purchase price and related collection information that you enter.
• Product interaction and diagnostic information: account-linked, high-level feature events (for example, that a user opened Price Check or completed setup), limited flow context, and app version. We use this to understand and improve Stave. These events never include search text, bottle names, barcodes, addresses, notes, photos, or precise location. We do not collect payment-card or bank-account information.

How we use information

We use information to operate Stave: provide your account, sync your cellar across your devices, identify bottles, show store and release features, deliver reminders and alerts you choose, review community submissions, respond to support requests, protect the app from misuse, and understand which high-level app flows need improvement. When monthly audience measurement is enabled, we use home ZIP and signed-in monthly opens to calculate store-level audience totals. For those totals, an account counts once across its devices, and known staff, test and duplicate accounts are excluded. Once finalized, a monthly total does not change when a home ZIP is edited later.

We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and Stave does not include advertising SDKs, tracking pixels, or cross-app or cross-site advertising tracking.

When information is shared

We use service providers that help us run authentication, database and storage, notifications, location search, and user-requested bottle-photo analysis. If camera-assisted bottle entry is available and you choose to use it, the label photos you selected and the bottle text or barcode you provided may be sent to Google’s Gemini service to extract bottle details. The app asks for permission immediately before that happens. Do not include people, faces, account information, or other personal information in those photos.

We also use mapping and place-search providers to return stores and route information you request. Providers process information only as needed to provide their services. We may disclose information when required to comply with law, protect users, or enforce our rights.

When monthly audience totals are available, verified store owners may see aggregate totals for their own stores. We may use those totals to administer applicable retailer agreements. Store owners do not receive individual account identities, home ZIPs, device locations or account-level activity records.

Community content

Community content can include store scores and comments, bottle sightings, lottery suggestions, collector profiles, Feed and group posts/comments, reactions, and bottle ratings. Some submissions are held for review before publication; public content can also be reported, moderated, removed, or restricted under our rules. Bottle sightings require a supporting photo; if approved, that photo is displayed with the sighting. Do not include people, faces, account information, or personal, sensitive, unlawful, threatening, or infringing content. We use your account identifier to operate and protect these features, but Stave does not display your email address with public community content.

Your choices and controls

You can control camera, photo-library, location, calendar, and notification access in your device settings. In Stave Settings, you can separately control alert categories, approval watches, Nearby Sighting Alerts, and lock-screen notification details. In compatible app releases with the home ZIP feature, you can also change or remove a saved home ZIP there; removing it excludes your account from later ZIP-based audience counts, while any finalized past months stay unchanged. You can update much of your account content in the app. To delete your account, use Settings → Danger Zone → Delete Account and confirm the request. Deletion removes your profile, cellar, bottle notes and rankings, watchlist, personal store state, sightings, personal drop state, notification tokens, feedback, pending submissions, and account-submitted photos. If collected, your home ZIP and account-level monthly audience activity are also removed; any already finalized aggregate store counts remain. Approved shared catalog contributions may remain without an account association, and public drop records may remain without an account association so other collectors’ reminders are not disrupted. We retain de-identified deletion-audit records to prevent a deleted session from restoring data and to verify completion. See Privacy Choices for practical steps and help with access, correction, or deletion requests.

Data security and retention

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards designed to protect the information we handle. No system is completely secure, so please keep your sign-in credentials private. We retain account and feature data while your account is active, then delete or de-identify it through our account-deletion process unless limited retention is necessary for security, fraud prevention, legal obligations, or dispute resolution. Device notification tokens are removed after 90 days without device activity, or 14 days after a disabled token is left unused. De-identified deletion-audit records currently do not have a fixed automated expiration; we retain them only for security and completion-verification purposes while a retention schedule is finalized.

Age eligibility

Stave's consumer features are for adults 21 and older. The public homepage asks you to enter a date of birth to check whether you are at least 21 in your browser, then affirm your age and accept the current Terms. The website does not save or send the full date of birth to Stave; it saves a confirmation in that browser containing only the 21-or-older affirmation, the Terms version, and the time of acceptance. In app version 1.4 and later, the app also asks you to enter a date of birth to check eligibility locally; the full date of birth is not saved or sent to Stave by that check. After you affirm your age and accept the Terms in the app, it saves an account-specific confirmation on that device with the same three fields. Clearing app or browser storage, using another device, or a Terms update can require you to confirm again. These self-attestations do not verify identity or replace a retailer's age check. If you believe an ineligible person has created an account, contact support to request assistance or deletion.

California and other privacy requests

Regardless of where you live, you can ask us about the personal information associated with your account, request correction or deletion help, or ask questions about our privacy practices. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. Send requests from the email address on your Stave account to support@stavebourbon.com. We may need to verify your request before acting on it.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy as Stave changes. We will post the updated version here and revise the effective date. Questions about privacy or your data can be sent to support@stavebourbon.com. For copyright concerns about user-submitted content, see Copyright concerns. See the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines for service and contribution rules.